SMRT (and occasionally SBS Transit) has been the subject of much ridicule over the past couple years, especially with its switch to and testing of every commuter’s most dreaded phrase: the new signaling system.
But hey, at least the rail operator knows it incurred our collective wrath a number of times and seeks to improve its services.
So at its annual review today, chief executive Desmond Kuek said that SMRT Corporation would strive to have no more than one delay per month by 2020, The Straits Times reported. If you think about it, that’s basically saying transport services would perform three times better than their current state.
However, Kuek also described the goal as a “bold target” that “only a handful” of the world’s trains could achieve. Not exactly a promising start, but sure, we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt.
He also went on to reveal that SMRT’s goal was to shorten any delay to less than five minutes which — forgive our pessimism — seems rather impossible, given that disruptions usually go on unannounced for way longer than that.
“It is these major incidents, lasting longer than 30 minutes, that we must strenuously avoid,” Kuek said.
Last year, there were nine incidents with delays stretching over half an hour (not including the four hold-ups caused by signaling faults), compared with six such occurrences in 2016.
